<\/p>\n
Dwayne \u201cthe Rock\u201d Johnson reflected on the opportunities he\u2019s been given in Hollywood since becoming an actor during a press conference at the Venice Film Festival.<\/p>\n
Johnson plays UFC champion Mark Kerr in Benny Safdie\u2019s wrestling biopic The Smashing Machine<\/a><\/em>, which premieres at the festival today and is due in theaters<\/a> Oct. 3. The wrestler turned actor noted that the role is his most dramatic to date. He co-stars with Emily Blunt, who plays Kerr\u2019s wife Dawn Staples.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI have, for a long time, wanted this,\u201d Johnson said (via Variety<\/em><\/a>), seated alongside Blunt and Safdie. \u201cThe three of us have talked for a very long time about, when you\u2019re in Hollywood \u2014 as we all know, it had become about box office. And you chase the box office, and the box office can be very loud and it can become very resounding and it can push you into a category and into a corner. \u2018This is your lane and this is what you do and this is what Hollywood wants you to do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson has starred in a slate of big-budget projects including Jumanji<\/em>, Fast and Furious<\/em>, Jungle Cruise<\/em>, and Black Adam<\/em>. He told reporters that \u201csome were really good and did well, and some not so good.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just had this burning desire and voice that was saying, \u2018What if there is more and what if I can?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of times, it\u2019s harder for us \u2014 or at least for me \u2014 to know what you\u2019re capable of when you\u2019ve been pigeonholed into something. Sometimes it takes people who you love and respect, like Emily and Benny, to say that you can.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cI looked around a few years ago and I started to think, you know, am I living my dream or am I living other people\u2019s dreams? You come to that recognition and I think you can either fall in line \u2014 \u2018Well, it\u2019s status quo, things are good, I don\u2019t want to rock the boat\u2019 \u2014 or go, \u2018I want to live my dreams now and do what I wanna do and tap into the stuff that I want to tap into and have a place finally to put all this stuff that I\u2019ve experienced in the past that I\u2019ve shied away from.\u2019 I\u2019ve been scared to go deep and intense and raw until now, until I had this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n The Smashing Machine<\/em> is Safdie\u2019s solo directing debut. He previously collaborated with his brother Josh on films such as Uncut Gems<\/em> and Good Time<\/em>. Safdie wrote and directed the biopic, which also features real-life MMA stars Ryan Bader, Bas Ritten, and Oleksandr Usyk.<\/p>\n Kerr is a two-time UFC\u00a0Heavyweight Tournament Champion whose momentous life was previously chronicled in the 2002 HBO documentary\u00a0\u201cThe Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0The roots of the feature film go back to 2019, when Johnson\u2019s production company landed the rights to Kerr\u2019s life story. He reached out to Safdie to helm the project, but the pandemic soon put the entire motion picture industry on indefinite hold. It didn\u2019t get going again until Emily Blunt, who starred with Johnson in 2021\u2019s\u00a0Jungle Cruise,<\/em>\u00a0discussed it with Safdie when they worked together in 2023\u2019s\u00a0Oppenheimer<\/em>.<\/p>\n The film is the first project of Johnson\u2019s acting career that has stirred up talk of an possible Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dwayne \u201cthe Rock\u201d Johnson reflected on the opportunities he\u2019s been given in Hollywood since becoming an actor during a press conference at the Venice Film Festival. Johnson plays UFC champion Mark Kerr in Benny Safdie\u2019s wrestling biopic The Smashing Machine, which premieres at the festival today and is due in theaters Oct. 3. The wrestler […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1991380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[326505,313617,22860,359884,344655,333428],"class_list":["post-1991379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-benny-safdie","tag-emily-blunt","tag-hollywood","tag-jungle-cruise","tag-mark-kerr","tag-venice-film-festival"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Dwayne-Johnson-Says-He-Was-\u2018Pigeonholed-as-an-Actor-Prior.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1991379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1991380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1991379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1991379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1991379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}